Design Jams, Part 1

At a consultation in the Lab a couple of weeks ago, the group we were chatting with had never heard the term “design jam” before, so I thought I’d get some ideas into a couple of blog posts, in case there are others who’ve never encountered this way of working before.

So what the heck is a design jam?

Design Jams, Part 1

or

So I’ve Got This Great Idea, But I Don’t Really Know Exactly What I Can Do With It or How To Get Started, and Other Sundry Considerations

or

The Big One

Design jams are group brainstorming and idea generation sessions that are intended to solve design problems by generating a wide set of possible interventions. So, think of it like getting about 1000 feet up above the research you want to do with a bunch of smart, experienced people, and just riffing on ideas for a while. By going broad before you try to go deep, you can help to insure that you’re asking the actual question you want to ask (aka, the one that actually interests you and pushes your research in the direction you most want it to go), that you’ve got the right data collection approach to get what you need in order to generate the answers you’re seeking, and that you can creatively approach presenting those answers to your intended audiences in ways that help them deepen their understanding of your research.

Hang on! Don’t run! Design jams are fun! I promise. Really.

So how do we do this kind of design jam in the Scholars’ Lab? I’m so glad you asked!

You take one or more scholars and/or researchers who have a project idea, add in several Scholars’ Lab staff members with varying education, training, and practical experience, sprinkle over subject specialist librarians from the appropriate disciplines, technical specialists from other units in the Library whose perspectives and input will be needed and valuable to the scholar/researcher, a large whiteboard with a variety of markers, and about 1-2 hours time.

Note: You remember the meeting facilitation for beginners post that Brandon and I posted a couple of years ago? Yeah, for a design jam, throw most of that out. The last thing you want for a “big” design jam is a really rigid agenda. You do want an agenda, but not one that’s timeboxed in the same way a regular staff or project meeting is timeboxed. That’s also why a design jam is generally longer than a regular project meeting, too.

So what do we need from someone who wants to do this kind of design jam with us? You have to have a project idea that’s got enough breadth and depth for the meeting to be generative. So if you’re refining ideas that you’ve already spent a lot of time researching and writing about, or if you want to use the results of an existing body of research to create a digital presentation of its data, it’s unlikely that this variety of design jam will be required. (More about this in the next post in this series. Coming soon to a Scholars’ Lab blog near you!)

But if you’re looking at new projects, projects that connect to your existing work in new ways or at new depth, it’s likely that a “big” design jam could be helpful in getting focused and aiming your work in the right direction.

How should you prepare? That’s another great question, I’m so glad you asked. You need to have done some basic research into the overall scholarly landscape in which your project will exist. Who else is out there doing work and asking questions that are similar? Whose project in their own discipline, or topics within your discipline, made you wonder how similar techniques would benefit your own research? What tools are being used to gather and process the data required, what technical skill sets are needed, and which of those do you already possess or want to acquire, or have available funds to pay someone to do?

Finally, you need to give some thoughts to the existing constraints on this research. What’s your timeframe for completing your project? What sort of budget are you looking at for doing the research and then producing the end results? (If you’re coming to us, there’s assuredly a digital component to the data gathering, and likely to those end results, and we can help you better understand how long processes are likely to take.)

Here’s the basic flow, which is the only agenda that we’re likely to use:

• Gathering
• Introductions all around
• Project idea summary from the scholar
• Questions from us about the landscape of scholarship, and tools and techniques, if known, any known constraints, and desired audience for the products of your research
• Open ended questions from us about the scope of your work and the vision you have for any end products
• Brainstorming and gathering ideas that the group comes up with about refinements to the research question, sources for data gathering, potential tools and techniques, analysis ideas, presentation opportunities

The overall goal of the jam is to come out of it with a project idea with which a first iteration could be built. What happens if you apply these data collection, data cleaning, and data analysis tools?¹ What research questions can you actually answer with those results? Is that actually the question you wanted to ask and answer? What can you build from those answers to communicate your scholarship to your intended audience?

So the product of the jam is an initial project plan, which can be refined after an initial small iteration into the final project plan that will allow you to do the scholarship you most want to do. Once that short iteration is complete, we can help you refine the workflows, evaluate the tools you tried out, and then write a new project plan.

The goal overall for the second pass at data gathering and analysis is to set you up to actually do the project you want to do, and hopefully, get to a place where you have proof of concept that will feed into a grant proposal, should you find you wish to pursue this scholarship further.

Sound interesting? Did you just realize that you’ve got just this kind of idea kicking around, but didn’t know where to start planning? Please contact us! We’d love to chat with you about your ideas!